It Shouldn't Happen to a Teacher

Yesterday I had to cover a geography lesson period 5. It was horrible for several reasons, the first being the timing. The second is there there were several what I shall euphamistically call characters in the class. And by virtue of the fact that the class were year 10s and I'd never done a GCSE in geography they actually had a greater education then me in the subject. Added to this the work was dreary and uninspiring and you have a recipe for a nightmare.

I had to take one boy outside because he was being a nuiscane and when I came back in everyone had turned their chairs so that they were sat facing the back of the room. It's such a cliche, doing daft things like that to wind up a cover teacher. So I broke it by smiling at them, because let's be honest it's not a bad gag, and calmly pointing out that every minute they spent facing the wrong way they would make up at the end of the day. They decided that it probably wasn't worth it and moved to face the right way.

It's weird. I struggle alot sometimes with basic things like making sure everyone's listening or getting the pupils to do enough work but when it's the big moments where you could so easily lose it in a massive way and swear at them or run out of the classroom in tears I feel completely serene.

After the chair incident they calmed down because I think they realised that they weren't going to get to me and we cruised through to the end.

It turns out that I look like a character from an American sitcom, according to one of my year tens at least. This sounds like quite a compliment but you have to understand that the character in questions is a geek and in fact the only resemblance I can see is dark hair, glasses and the said geekiness.

The programme is 'The Big Bang Theory' on E4 and is about some nerdy scientist types. The characters are an aspergic genius, an Indian guy who literally (and I mean literally) cannot talk to beautiful women, someone who thinks he's a smooth playa but is actually just creepy. And then there's the main one, Leonard, who's definitely a geek but is the sort of Everyman of the show, or at least as much as it's possible to be whilst talking about solutions that only work for 'spherical chickens in a vacuum'. This is who I'm like apparently. I didn't really mind the comparison seeing as I watch the show myself and happily indulged in a quick chat about it. But...

In the programme there's a gorgeous girl living across the hall from them who predictably Leonard has a crush on. This got my year tens asking if I had a crush on any gorgeous women. Suddenly a nice little chat about a TV was taking a turn into dangerous territory.

'I know!' said one of them, 'It's Miss English'. No, no, no, this is bad. Yes she is gorgeous and yes I did used to have a crush on her and I'd even made the same comparison myself, though in my case I'm one geek surrounded at school by many good looking women rather than the other way round.

Suddenly I went all tense. I told my pupils that it wasn't right for them to make that sort of comment and how it wasn't appropriate etc... Which amazingly they seemed to understand, until one of them chipped in with 'she's going out with Mr Science anyway'.

'No she isn't' I said rather too defensively as I felt a pang of envy rising up even though I knew they were talking crap. Again the pupils picked up on this and I had to cover my tracks by saying that I wasn't happy that they were discussing other members of staff and they should stop.

And for the second time in a matter of a few seconds they bought it and did as I said. I think I actually got away with it somehow and nothing further was said on the topic. Sometimes I wish my year tens were a little bit smarter, this wasn't one of those occasions.

You'd have thought I'd have learnt my lesson too, but in the following lesson when a year eight asked me if I'd watched Heroes the previous night I still talked to them about it. In this case I think I was safe seeing as the worse they could have asked me would be if I could fly, cut my toe off and watch it grow back or stop time. The last of these would have been very useful an hour earlier.